‘Aliosha’s Bagged Body Spent 1.5 Years In Morgue’

The family has been looking for the Russian occupier killed in the war since 2022.

For more than a year and a half, relatives were looking for a 20-year-old resident of the Usolye-Siberian, Irkutsk region of the Russian Federation, Alexei Kislichenko. In the spring of 2022, he was drafted into the army, for military service, the Siberia Realities website writes.

He joined the tank troops and served in the Chelyabinsk region. Alexey signed a contract with the Russian MoD under unknown to his family circumstances and he was sent to the war in Ukraine. After a few weeks, he stopped communicating and was missing for more than a year and a half. He was buried quite recently.

"He lied that he was engaged in repair of damaged vehicles"

At the end of December 2023, the Ministry of Defence brought to the Irkutsk region remnants of Alexei’s body. "Thanks to the volunteers," Kislichenko's relatives say. After that, the family had to sue for the remains to be recognized as the ashes of Alexei.

“He lied to his parents that he was sitting in the rear and repairing damaged Russian tanks when everything was over. He didn't want to upset them. In fact, he fought near Bakhmut," says Alexei's sister Anastasia. “In May, he still got in touch, then disappeared.”

As it turned out later, in May 2022, Alexey's tank was hit near the village of Trypillya (a village in the Obukhiv district of the Kyiv region of Ukraine, 40 kilometers south of Kyiv on the right bank of the Dnipro River). The local authorities provided this information.

“They said that the ammunition detonated in the vehicle and Lesha and his colleague died immediately. Only the crew commander survived – he was thrown out through an open hatch. He survived miraculously. 70% of his body was burned when he reached a hospital. Only two tanks were destroyed that day, the third one returned without losses," says Viktor, a friend of the occupier.

That happened in May 2022. His family learned all these details about the burnt-out tank and Alexei only in December 2023, after more than a year and a half.

“Local officials say that the tank crewman from Usolye was identified only after DNA examination. They lied. In fact, his parents claimed the identification of his remnants in court,” says a friend of the deceased.

Alexei's father confirms that the family was looking for their son who had gone into the army for a year and a half to no avail. But volunteers found him.

“All this time he was not lying on the battlefield, and all these almost two years his body was in Rostov – a bag with his burnt remnants was there in the morgue [in Rostov]. Not the Ministry of Defence returned it but volunteers. And then, thank God, everything turned out – they did not allow him to be buried, since there was not enough [evidence] the DNA analysis. Alexei's parents had to file a lawsuit in Usolye to prove that he was their son," says another friend of the deceased.

It was possible to prove only in December 2023 – before the New Year holidays, Kislichenko was buried in the Usolye cemetery on the Alley of Glory.

More than a year and a half of searches is not uncommon, says the Head of the Citizen Army Law Human Rights Group, Sergey Krivenko.

“That is, immediately after the outbreak of the war, he ‘disappeared’, when there was a rapid offensive [of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation]. And then the Russian army left, and many corpses stayed there. The search was not organized by the Ministry of Defence. It is difficult to blame Ukraine for this, they collected the corpses of Russian soldiers, if possible, and even carried out identification of the bodies. But this, of course, was not massive – they were doing their best. That is, these are, of course, some cases: careful, cautious work with thousands of corpses that remained in the spring of 2022 on the territory of Ukraine, from where the Russian army left. It was possible to identify several bodies there. And now there are some, maybe, transmissions, processes such as body exchange. This is very unclear, and there is no information about it, as well as on the exchange of prisoners. It is not classified, but at the same time, there is no information – how, who prepares it, who conducts it and what are the procedures," says Krivenko.

According to his calculations (very approximate), the number of missing persons, which include the Russian military, is about 10,000. There is no official information about this, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation does not publish the figures of losses.